A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

This obviously includes almost every politician you have ever heard pontificating on the subject, including Gore. I would not say that many of them are not being serious. I think they know perfectly well that the catastrophic warming story is a lie but that they are seriously using it to get us to wear our regulatory & tax chains with equanimity.

Currently the polls show the Yes vote a bit ahead though the gap is closing. On that basis the EU should just get it but there is a possibility, with the Irish politicians & media so heavily supporting a Yes that people answering are tending to shy away from admitting a No preference (rather as people did with the Tories in John Major's first election.

What will happen if there is a No vote. Last time the politicians told the Irish they had got the wrong result & go away & try again. Perhaps they will do the same now. In theory the entire constitreaty should fall but somehow I don't see that happening. However it would certainly be embarrassing if the only country to be allowed a referendum (because it is part of their constitution) voted No. It would make it look like the EU wasn't a democracy.

The BBC regularly assure us that Russia isn't a democracy, even though its government got in because people voted for it (unlike here where only 20%) be3cause their media supports generally supports their government line whereas our media doesn't support their government line. Look to the BBC denouncing any Yes vote on the grounds the media were biased - or not as the case may be.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Labour MP Martin Salter, who left a comment here a few days ago supporting the warming scam has done a, quite intelligent, article on what he correctly describes as the "disaster in Crewe". He criticises the way the campaign was run, which I cannot comment on, but more importantly

However it is easier to be in favour of cutting waste & quangos in theory than in practice - would Martin cut the Sustainable Development Commission on which the government pays to give Jonathan Porridge a platform to assert that windmills work better than nuclear? That is why quangos are established - to give nice little earners to those & such as those.

To be fair I am not that convinced that the Tories generally are much more active about doing so but as the people who didn't create them they perhaps have a better claim to be able to get rid of them. If the Tories (or indeed LDs) want to look credible on the economy they should select a few specific quangos & announce they will cull them. There would be screams of outrage from them but some relief from some of the others. More impotantly it would dish any Labour claims if the Tories cut spending they will cut services. A common trick in opposing spending cuts is to choose the most important & visible expenses & say that is what the opponents want. This would spike Labour guns.

This seems to me to be a clear instance of the anti-smoking health fascists being engaged in a purely vindictive ban.

Whatever the health effects there is no dispute that smoking eases tension & for people locked up for years in asylums tension is clearly a greater & more immediate problem than lung cancer. Even were the passive smoking claims not fabricated this ban is clearly going to have no medical, or at least no positive medical effect.

There must be many people in such hospitals whose main pleasure in life is a smoke.

This would be what the Americans call a cruel & unusual punishment if it were not for the fact that people in asylums, unlike prisoners, are officially not being punished for their affliction but being "helped" by the "caring professions".

Meanwhile an exception to the smoking ban has been made for prisons. Clearly the reasoning is that prisoners are often unfriendly gentlemen whom you wouldn't like when they are angry & that allowing smoking helps keep a lid on the place, while the insane are usually vulnerable, weak & not really able to defend themselves.

One sign of a sick society is that those in power do not have enough control to enforce laws on everybody & instead enforce them capriciously only on those they can reach. [Another example is a proposal on the BBC today that anybody dropping litter from their car get 3 points on the licence (which is supposed to be about safety but the PC brigade will twist any rule) but that if you kill somebody while driving disqualified, for the 3rd time, you will only get a 3 year ban (possibly also some jail) because they know such people would ignore a lifetime ban.]

Note that I am not saying prisoners should also suffer a smoking ban - they shouldn't - but that this ban is a very cruel one particularly here when enforced against some of the weakest & most vulnerable in society. This is a genuine instance of evil - it serves no useful purpose whatsoever & is being done by our rullers & the lobbyists they defer to just because they can.